Sysiphus Speaks

So he had days of stinging, burning, tearing eyes. Saw the ophthalmologist who gave drops for allergies, but to no effect. So he was advised to take dried nettles by a friend. He did. And within one hour, yes, one hour, he was completely cured. By the nettles.

Despite the institutional homeopathic habit in the UK, it is refreshing as a drink of Bull Run water to discover that homeopathy is on the decline in England. 

CAM should absolutely be taught in medical school, but not as part of an " undergraduate curriculum for promoting treatments that are not underpinned by hard evidence that they work and are acceptably safe." but as object lessons on critical thinking, the medical equivalent of Scared Straight. Students learn valuable critical thinking skills by the examining the examples where it was applied so horribly wrong.

Not all legislatures are fooled by the naturopathic-supplement complex.

"I find it erroneous for a site to state Acupuncture does not work, when I have been using it for a decade and can see by experience that it works." A common justification for use of pseudo-medicines by both providers and consumers. I sometimes think the words 'In my experience' define, more than any other concept, the boundary between the pseudo-medical world and reality.

A variety of studies using home movies have found evidence of autism as early as 6 months, before vaccinations.

Today Summary of evidence-based guideline: Complementary and alternative medicine in multiple sclerosis was published on the web. I thought it would be fun to list the three big whoppers in the paper:

No study, just a chiropractor making up the dangers of texting.

It’s very common for people to claim that an effect is real, not just chance, whenever the test produces a P value of less than 0.05, and when asked, it’s common for people to think that this procedure gives them a chance of 1 in 20 of making a fool of themselves. Leaving aside that this seems rather too often to make a fool of yourself, this interpretation is simply wrong.

Chiropractors have been successful in preventing PTs from using spinal manipulation by getting state legislation passed barring them from doing so, even though there is not a shred of evidence that PTs are any less capable at it. PTs using their signature treatment scares them, because patients might start using PTs just to avoid the woo-ishness of chiropractic. And, of course, MDs prefer to refer patients to PT, so when manipulation is in order the PT will get the business.

a healing system is based on a 7th century poem. Why not? It is no worse than being bitten by a radioactive spider. It was the brainchild of Rev. Alfred Willowhawk of the Wite Rayvn Metaphysical Church of the Ozarks.

What a shock: Applied Kinesiology is useless. Applied Kinesiology is weird even in a sea of pseudo-medical weirdness.

If we can rid the earth of rhinderpest, we could, in theory, rid the world of measles. But probably not while there are the Dr. Sear's in the world.

It is perhaps my imagination, a touch of confirmation bias, but I get a sense that the pendulum is, for the time being, swinging away from the anti-vaccine crowd in the popular media.

I give you Efficacy observation of acupuncture bloodletting and penicillin on treatment of children acute tonsillitis.